UZBEKISTAN ~Bibi-Khanim mosque-Samarkand UNESCO ~

...Fantastic colorful  mosque view...a new "rare" place to add to my collection... and also a new UNESCO site!!Thanks Brigitte.


With nice stamps: Uzbek National Academic Drama Theatre and  two stamps to commemorate Berdaq, an Uzbek poet from the 19C

Uzbekistan, is the only doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of only two such countries worldwide.

Samarkand is the second largest city of the counry and one of the oldest inhabited cities (with a 2.500 years old history) in the world.. At the crossroads of the Great Silk road between the east and west it became a melting pot for all the cultures with which it came into contact.

The Bibi Khanum mosque was built between 1399 and 1404. It was once one of the Islamic world's largest mosques, but over the centuries it crumbled and it finally collapsed in an earthquake in 1897.  (In 1974 reconstruction started, unfortunately the inside has not jet been restored)The ensemble consists of two small side mosques and the large central mosque.